Has beautiful become a bad word?

Jen Vuk

I think it’s fair to say that Jo Swinson isn’t your average aunt. So worried was the 33-year-old UK women’s minister that she was sending the wrong message to her niece that she decided to never call her beautiful again.

As she told The Telegraph before this week’s progress report on the UK government’s “body confidence” campaign, parents needed “to stop telling their children they look beautiful because it places too much emphasis on appearance and can lead to body confidence issues later in life”.

This included not praising children (boys as well as girls) on their outfits or haircuts. It’s more appropriate, she said, to commend “children for their skill in doing a jigsaw and all these other things that they are doing”. She also suggested that “mothers should be careful about speaking about their own bodies in front of children”.

Could it be possible? Had ‘beautiful’ really become such a dirty word? Certainly, the word and its ilk—gorgeous, pretty, attractive—is more than the sum of its parts, which on the surface, anyway, is as much an invocation as an observation. But there’s also no use denying that such language has given weight to the stereotypes that has led to nearly “a third of girls [being] unhappy with their appearance”, as official UK figures show.

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Our very own Raising Children website paints no less gloomy picture. In a sample of almost 48,000 Australians aged 11-24, 31% reported body image as their top concern.

Surprisingly, boys don’t fair much better. In one study of adolescent boys about a third wanted to be thinner, while another third wanted to be larger.

Yes, Swinson, who has no children, is clearly an MP driven by the winds of change rather than the whims of the cabinet, and she has my whole-hearted support and admiration, but here’s the rub. She puts me to shame.

Here’s why. Every little person who passes through my orbit is likely to be welcomed by the greeting: “Hi there [insert “gorgeous girl” or “beautiful boy”]. So much so that I now say it without thinking.

Lame alliteration aside, here I was thinking I was boosting a child’s self-esteem. In truth, this habit springs from somewhere deep inside my childhood photo album. I have some vague memory of someone … a family friend, godmother or, yes, aunt, getting down at eye level, brushing a well-manicured finger against my cheek and telling me what I longed to hear: that I was “PRETTY”.

I can still remember the hairs on my then thin arms standing on end. I felt a glow and stood somehow taller. I was vindicated. Validated. Noticed.

It’s this feeling that I wanted to carbon copy and stamp on all those little boys and girls who, may or may not, be edging towards the unfamiliar territory of Invisibility. I wanted them to know that their beauty is something that can’t be bottled, is fresh and wonderful and is so dazzling that it allows an urban-worrier mum like me to forget, if for a moment, about how close I am to losing my shit. Yet again.

Considering most kids I meet are between the ages of three and six it’s unlikely they’ll pick up the subtext, let alone take it away with them. And the last thing I’d want to do is to plant in their glorious, expansive, fertile minds the same seed of doubt that was sown in me. It’s no exaggeration to say that between the ages of 11 and 14, I ruined hours of prime-time television for my Dad when on loop came the inane question: “Do you think she’s pretty/beautiful/attractive?”

As Swinson reminds us: “It’s not like saying that appearance doesn’t matter at all. If you’re going for an interview, you will dress smartly and look the part, that is absolutely fine, but it’s just the level to which this becomes the ultimate focus of everything, where you have people who won’t go to school unless they’ve put their make-up on, or won’t leave the house unless they’ve spent two hours getting ready.”

Far be it from me to further peddle, however inadvertently, this ‘image-is-everything’ mindset. From now on I hope to take a leaf out of Jo Swinson’s parenting manual; it’s time to step back and take a deep breath so as not to repeat the same old pattern. After all, if I’m really serious about having children feel valued, acknowledged and “body confident” then I best get my message straight.

What do you think? Should we tell children they're beautiful? Leave your comment below or join the discussion on the Essential Kids Forums.

13 comments so far

Should we tell children they're beautiful? YES - teach them all the places and in all the ways that beauty can exist.....artwork, nature, acts of kindness - and in their personalities. I have never told my 3.5 yr old that she "looks beautiful". I have told her that she looks "sporty", "warm and cosy", and "just right for going to the park". BUT - I only comment on her appearance if she asks. Frankly - we've got far too many other interesting things to talk about than what she looks like.

Commenter

Charlotte

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 11:07AM

Tell your daughters and tell your sons! Tell them they're beautiful and clever and wonderful all the time!!! Just because they are, not because they look a certain way but because of the magic way the DO look, see, experience, learn etc etc.I tell my children that they are the greatest....for me, but that most people are great.That they are the best to us, but mustn't consider themselves to be better than everyone else.They get it, they feel loved and confidant but they are also really nice, accepting people.

Commenter

SCooke

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 12:24PM

Totally agree. The essence of the article seems to be that we must bring kids down so others don't feel left out. I feel sorry for someone who doesn't think they're kids are amazing and sorry for the children that don't get to hear it from parents who love them.

Commenter

Cam

Location

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 4:19PM

I recall my dad telling everyone off when they said I was a beautiful little girl. "she's NICE, not beautiful" - he'd growl. Many years later, shortly after having my baby, he goaded me on to get back to work ASAP, as "only beautiful women are kept women in this world".

Do not think you are doing the little ones any favours by withholding something you are hung up about yourself, thereby creating a complex in the receiver of your (too) well thought out compliments. Children have the potential to become whatever they want, and all children are beautiful, in their own way. You have no right to deny them any knowledge of themselves, and being beautiful has many facets, not just physical. Children are an amazing mixture of many things, and as adults we should praise them honestly for all they are, certainly not limit them to "beautiful".

To this day I wonder what my father thought was the benefit of making sure I knew that I was not beautiful....

Commenter

Nono

Location

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 2:01PM

What absolute rubbish! Of course we must tell our children they are beautiful! I was not told growing up and have always has self-esteem issues. I tell my daughter she is beautiful every day (which she is) but that she is also a beautiful person (which she is).

Commenter

Judy

Location

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 2:11PM

You would get the impression from this article that Jo Swinson had said that parents shouldn't tell their children they are beautiful. In fact, she didn't: she was saying that it's easy for parents and others to fall into the trap of *only* praising girls that telling them that they're beautiful, and not remembering to praise them for being curious, intelligent etc as well. She didn't say parents should stop telling their children they're beautiful. You can find the original interview with Jo Swinson online and it's perfectly reasonable.

I think we've all encountered girls who get praised only for being pretty or boys who get praised only for being sporty, but never for being enthusiastic readers or into maths or thoughtful or kind and so on.

Commenter

praise express

Location

Date and time

May 31, 2013, 10:37AM

Nothing wrong with telling your children that they are beautiful. I would dread to think as a parent that I need to be careful and not to give my child a positive message because I might unleash a deeply hidden insecurity. Where does that end? If you keep the conversation open with your kids, hopefully they will talk to you about their insecurities and you have the opportunity to put that in balance. That is more important than worrying about how a positive may somehow become a negative. Derogatory and divisive comments are what truly causes damage.

When the ad for the Fred Hollows Foundation came on last night and my daughter asked who he was I told her Fred Hollows was a very beautiful person and explained why.

Commenter

justme

Location

Newcastle

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 2:30PM

As social animals we have interaction based on acceptance and recognition. We read facial expressions at an early age. Recognition of beauty in its many forms is part of normal interaction. It doesn't mean that there should be an expectation of privilege. Praise for being pretty, sporting, active hard working, manners or achieving is positive reinforcement and counterbalances negatives relating to bad behaviour or personal hygiene or appearance. There is plenty of time as older teenagers where these fundamentals are forgotten.The alternative is 'Its a tough world out there, get used to it.' ( I was tempted to use the expression 'suck it up Princess, or Prince,)

Commenter

Quantum of Solace

Location

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 3:54PM

If you can't see beauty in a child then you have no feelings, its called love, apparentlysome people don't have any.

Commenter

Wazza

Location

Date and time

May 30, 2013, 5:34PM

It is over 50 years since I first became a primary school teacher and was shocked to find young attractive children, in my grade 3 classes, who had learned to bat their eyelids rather than use their brains. These kids had learned how to get what they wanted by behaving as beautiful not by developing their skills.

I have a nephew who as a child looked angelic - blonde ringlets, big eyes, cheerful smile. My mother used to all him gorgeous and cute and seek others' agreement with her view. I remember telling her to value him for other qualities because his beauty might well pass. As it did. Of my mother's 12 grandchildren he is the least socially successful. Now in his early forties, he has long lost the looks that got him through childhood without having to apply himself or learn about taking the good times with the bad. He drifts from job to job, girlfriend to girlfriend, makes arrangements to meet his father and then does not turn up, exasperates his older brother and younger sister with his complaints of how hardly done by he is.

Praise kids for their achievements and their attempts to try new skills and activities; tell them their choice of garment or new hair cut suits them (if it does); value them for their kindness or thoughtfulness towards others; encourage them to be active in their choices. But remember beauty is only skin deep and can fade - it is not a life skill that can be relied on.

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